Old Hunters on the New Wild

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 7 – Clones Who Cry…

  Commotion filled the camp shortly before dawn. The hunters stirred in their sleep as they blazed their weapons and claimed their trophies within their confident dreams. Clones hurried about the tents to prepare for the arriving day. Mudder stew bubbled in cast iron pots suspended above morning campfires. Clones filled crates with ammunition, hopeful that the day arrived when all the hunters would find the courage to fire their rifles and consume so many of the bullets the wide-shouldered mudders carried into the savanna. The palanquins were prepared, refilled with fresh pillows so that the men and women who rode upon the mudders’s backs would sway in luxury as the clones carried them to the hunting grounds.

  The morning bustle progressed very quietly, for the clones possessed an uncanny ability to labor without disturbing humankind. The mudders communicated with one another through elaborate hand gestures and soft whistles if there was ever a rare question regarding the repair of a weapon or the location of a medical kit. Experience made each mudder proficient in all the rituals of provisioning. Thus the hunters rarely realized how much transpired in that hour before they lifted their heads from their pillows and stepped from their cushioned cots to find steaming bowls of mudder stew waiting for their breakfast, the day’s caravan of mudder guides prepared to escort them into the veld the moment the stomach of each hunter settled.

  Kendra paced the camp’s perimeter just before dawn, checking the electric fence for any sign that a faux fox might’ve infiltrated the camp during the night, attracted by the scent of venison salted and smoking in one of the tents located at the heart of the camp that was dedicated to the preservation of food. Her duty demanded concentration, for the buzzing fence often attracted the rainbow serpent, whose bright scales warned of the snake’s poisonous venom. Kendra focused so intently upon her search that she jumped for fright when she felt a hand softly squeeze her shoulder.

  She twisted and lifted her antler knife, but tall Jarvis lifted a finger to his lips to quiet her before she might shout.

  “Listen, Kendra. I need you to listen.”

  “You move too quietly, even for a mudder,” Kendra growled. “I thought you were one of the savanna cats come to drag me away for its breakfast. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be inspecting Mr. Holmes’ weapons for the coming hunt?”

  “That hunter checks his weapons himself,” whispered Jarvis. “I’m afraid I’ve got something else to worry about. Something I think needs your help. Listen.”

  “What is it?”

  Jarvis gently set his finger upon Kendra’s lips. “Listen.”

  Kendra closed her eyes and focused upon what she heard. It took a few moments for Kendra to find what Jarvis wished her to discover. The camp might’ve seemed very quiet to a man or woman, but Kendra’s senses had been trained so keen following all her years in the tall grass, and her ears filled with so many of a waking camp’s soft noises. Patiently, her mind filtered through the sounds, until she heard the noise that hurried Jarvis to find her.

  Kendra arched an eyebrow. “Someone is crying.”

  Jarvis nodded. “And the sound is coming from the far side of the camp, from the tents that stand the furthest distance away from the hunters.”

  “We’re lucky that the hunters are sleeping.”

  “But how much longer will it be before they wake? What if it’s that crying that wakes them in the morning?”

  “I understand why you came to me.”

  “Good. Now hurry, Kendra.”

  Kendra dashed into the camp. None of the other clones paid much attention to her as she careened and ducked her way towards the sound of sobbing that echoed in her ears after she separated the noise from the remainder of the camp’s commotion. The sound of crying owned no place within a camp of mudders. Clones always tended to their duties without complaint. Clones never sighed when hearing whatever task a master required. Clones asked for no payment in exchange for their toil. Clones never unionized to collectively barter for holidays and healthcare. Clones only nodded before setting their muscles and minds to the effort. And above all else, a clone never cried, not when a clone worked for days on end without food and sleep, not when a clone might be sold or traded from one worker community to another, not when a clone fractured a leg or lost an eye. The clones were built to appreciate whatever labor their superiors assigned to them. The recipe of a clone’s crafting insured that every clone felt content. It was simply supposed to be beyond a clone’s biology to cry.

  Yet some mudder was crying. Kendra moved as she might had she been tracking a prism peacock or a tungsten turkey for the pleasure of the hunters. She ducked beneath a palanquin just as clones elevated the carriage from the ground. The smell of genolope strips sizzling at the fires failed to distract her.

  Jarvis had very good reason to feel apprehensive at the thought of a mudder crying in his camp. Every clone had reason to feel afraid at the sound of a clone crying in the worker community. The geneticists commonly recalled entire batches of clones to their facilities after an individual mudder displayed the slightest sign of mental instability – a snort or a sneer upon receiving a work command, or a habit of asking too many questions concerning matters a clone had no need to fathom. Clones recalled to their genetic laboratories seldom returned to the field, regardless if all the other mudders of a troubled individual’s batch showed no trace at all of cognitive malfunction. The geneticists believed it best to play it safe, better to pay the expense of recalling so many clones than to risk allowing some defect in the individual to injure woman or man, or to spark the rebellion of any clone laborer.

  Kendra knew that a crying clone would give her creators ample reason to recall her community, and she held no illusion that she might return to the savanna should that recall happen. The hunters would report whatever they considered to be strange in a clone’s behavior. The hunters would have no motivation to keep a case of a crying clone a secret.

  And so Kendra raced through the camp, hoping a hunter didn’t emerge from a tent to distract her with some request she held no ability to resist. She kept to the darkest paths that early morning, feeling like some furtive creature stalking closer to that source of sobbing. She concentrated. She wouldn’t allow her imagination to wander. She suspected well enough what was responsible for such crying.

  A female mudder stood before the tent from which Kendra heard the crying, and she raised her hands to slow Kendra before Kendra bolted into the chamber.

  “It’s Sansa, Kendra.”

  Kendra stalled at the tent’s entrance. It would be wise to catch her breath, to consider how to proceed before rushing forward. But her fear made it difficult to catch only a moment. The crying grew louder, and Kendra was afraid the camp’s routine bustle would soon fail to conceal that sobbing.

  “What’s wrong, Ivanna?”

  “It’s her child. The boy doesn’t open his eyes, and Sansa cries. She cries no matter what we do to help.”

  Her mind whirled, and Kendra reminded herself that it was no moment for emotion. A mudder on the savanna soon learned that the new wild held no concern for anyone’s emotion, and Kendra knew that anger, or fear, or frustration could make a dangerous moment deadly. Yet her temper still fired. Why had the creators of her kind given them the ability to bear children? What reason did they own to justify the problems babies brought to their camp?

  Kendra drew a long breath to regain some composure. “I’m here now. I’ll find something to do. Circle the tent and keep an eye open for hunters. Should any of the hunters approach, do whatever you can to distract them and lead them away from this tent. Talk with them. Flatter them. But do all you can to distract them from hearing Sansa cry.”

  “What if they hear no matter what I do?”

  “Tell them a lie.” Kendra squeezed Ivanna’s hand when the female’s face paled at the suggestion. “You must not be afraid to lie. We didn’t ask our creators to give us these children, but all of us will be taken from the savanna sho
uld a hunter hear Sansa cry and find the babies kept in this tent. Lie to the hunters. Tell them that we tend to a mudder who has been attacked by a splicer-lynx. Say that pain forces the mudder to cry. The hunters will believe such a story.”

  Kendra ducked into the tent as Ivanna nodded. Inside, several females sat upon cushions acquired from the palanquins, concern widening their eyes as they looked to Kendra. Each female pushed a newborn child to her breast, nursing the babes in an effort to keep them quiet as Sansa’s crying filled their ears. Kendra’s thoughts still tumbled at the sight of those females feeding their children. Did human women truly feed their babes in such a way? How had human children ever survived through so many generations to reach a mating aging when they must’ve been so helpless when newly born, unable to so much as lift food into their mouths? How would Kendra’s community continue to meet the demands of their labors if they were forced to direct so much energy into the rearing of weak children? How could any of those mothers expect the new wild to give those babies the chance to grow strong? The new wild was too demanding, too strong, too terrible and uncaring to let such weak creatures call the swaying grasses home.

  Sansa rocked upon a pillow located at the opposite side of the tent. The others abandoned Sansa as she cried, afraid that Sansa’s sobbing would spread to their babies and magnify the situation’s danger. Kendra slowly approached Sansa and saw how tightly the mother pushed her baby’s face into her chest. The child’s skin was purple, and the boy’s chest failed to rise and fall with breath. Kendra sighed. Sansa’s child was lost, and the mother’s hands turned white as she gripped her boy like a stone. The mudders were new to raising children, but they were not new to death.

  Kendra pulled very softly at Sansa’s arm. “Your crying will not bring life back into your child. This isn’t the first death you’ve seen upon the savanna.”

  Something burned deep within Sansa’s eyes as the mother choked her sobbing so that she could respond. “He is my child. I’ve seen no death like this.”

  “Your cries don’t help him. They only jeopardize the rest of us,” Kendra gripped Sansa’s chin and forced the female to look into her eyes. “Look at the other mothers. See how your cries frighten them. See how your cries frighten their children. What do you think will happen to them, to all of us, if a hunter hears you crying?”

  “I don’t care. My baby is dead.”

  Kendra nodded. She heard the anger in the mother’s words. Kendra thought it was better for Sansa to feed that anger. A growl was quieter than a cry.

  “You do care for us, Sansa. You’re a mudder, a female marked with the blue bands. You care for things greater than yourself.”

  Sansa closed her eyes. She still gripped her dead child against her chest, but she turned quiet, and quiet was what Kendra needed most.

  “I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Sansa whispered. “Did I care for my boy any less than those mothers on the other side of the tent who are so frightened, or disgusted, to look at me? What have I done so that my baby is dead while their children nurse? I fed her, Kendra. No matter how my stomach growled, I fed her. I did everything I could. Why is my baby dead?”

  “I don’t know, Sansa.”

  “Was it a sickness that killed him? Is that why all those mothers sit so far away from me?”

  “Sansa, it will not help to keep asking such questions. It’s not a mudder’s place to think too long on such things.”

  Kendra never worried to know what power lifted the sun into the sky, or what force pushed it back beneath the earth come the darkening night. She was never curious to understand why her creators placed the murderous splicer-lynx upon the same savanna where they placed the beautiful genolope. She never felt any desire to contemplate the difference, or the misfortune, that tattooed the blue rings around a clone’s eye to create a servant instead of a human. To Kendra, the pursuit of such knowledge was a waste of time, a meaningless game that would do nothing to help a clone meet the demands of his or her day. Kendra pulled a little harder at Sansa’s arm, and for the first time, Kendra felt the urge to understand why some animals thrived upon the veld while others perished. For the first time, she wondered what made the clone different from the man. She wondered why some were born to command, and why others were born to serve. Kendra had known what her life would hold for her before her peers gave birth to daughters and sons. But as she pulled at Sansa’s arm, Kendra no longer knew what her world expected of her.

  “Sansa, you cannot keep hold of a dead thing. You don’t want your child to fester. You don’t want to attract a carrion rat, or the faux fox. You don’t want to endanger us all by holding on to that dead child, so that you only increase the risk of the hunters learning how we are giving birth to offspring.”

  Sansa’s grip finally lessened. “Promise me you will not bury him.”

  “What would you have me do with the body?”

  “Burn him, Kendra. Burn him so that none of the wild digs for him. Burn him so that he’s only smoke and ash.”

  “I promise, Sansa. Now let him go.”

  Sansa released her child, and Kendra quietly departed the tent. There was no need to prolong Sansa’s suffering, no need to linger while struggling to find impossible words that might comfort the bereaved mother. The savanna knew no such words. It was better for Kendra to hurry away and resist the urge to peer over her shoulder. The tent was again quiet. The hunters would soon depart for their day’s adventure. Their attentions would not be attracted to a sound so strange as a sobbing mudder.

  Kendra burned the baby’s body in the middle of the day when she knew many miles of grass separated the hunters from the camp. No other clone approached to ask Kendra why she burned such a large fire when the sun burned its brightest. Their day’s work kept them too busy, and diligent labor taught the clones it was best to allow others to complete their duties without the burden of questions.

  She watched the smoke lift from the fire, and Kendra felt very alone, a very rare sentiment for a clone designed and bred for work. She felt a pain swell within her. Something felt broken. Something felt changed. Her world seemed silent, and barren, and Kendra couldn’t resist the urge to do something so strange to her kind as cry.

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